*Possible trigger warning*


"Sir, you have an incoming vidcomm hail."

Admiral Hackett looked up from his desk as his yeoman stepped into his office. "Who is it, Corporal?"

"Your nephew, Ryan. He says it's important."

Hackett nodded and walked across the room to the communicator. He paced impatiently in front of the screen as it flickered to reveal his seventeen-year-old nephew, looking extremely pale and very worried.

"Ryan? What's going on?"

"Something happened, Uncle Steven. And... I know you're not prone to believe me or Katie when it comes to Marcus, but for Katie's sake, this time you have to. Please."

Hackett frowned. "Ryan, you're not making any sense. What happened? Where's Katie?"

"I don't... I don't really know exactly. But my dad got shot. And Katie's gone."

"WHAT?"

"My girlfriend Sara and I had been to a concert. We were going to go by the bar afterwards so she could meet Katie, because I knew she'd still be up. She always is. Anyway, we were heading to my skycar when I got a call from the cops saying my dad had been shot."

"Is he...?"

"It's too soon to tell, is what they keep saying. He just came out of surgery. That's why I waited so long to call."

"It's alright. Is Sara still with you? You don't want to be alone right now, Ryan."

Ryan nodded. "She's still here. She called her parents to tell them what happened and they're coming down too."

"Good. Now, what makes you so sure this has anything to do with Marcus? And what did you mean Katie's 'gone'?"


Two days later, Hackett found himself standing outside Marcus' apartment in the Lower Wards of the Citadel. He wasn't only going on Ryan's word. There had been no word from Katie, and no one could get in touch with her either. He was running out of options. Something had definitely happened, and Marcus was a good place to start.

"Something I can help you with, Steven?" Marcus asked snidely as he opened the door.

"Ryan called me a couple of days ago, said Jason had been shot," Hackett said as he stepped into the apartment.

"I see. And this has what to do with me?"

Hackett rolled his eyes. "Your lack of caring about your brother is very telling, Marcus. And according to Ryan, it has everything to do with you."

"You've never believed a word Ryan has ever said about me. Why start now?"

"Katie. She was there for her summer visit, has been since the beginning of May. I haven't heard from her since the day before Ryan called me."

Marcus scoffed. "So? She's a fifteen-year-old girl. She's probably busy with her friends. She-"

"She calls me every single day when she's staying with Jason, without fail. The fact that she hasn't called me in two days means something is very wrong. The very fact that she wasn't the one who called me about Jason tells me she's in trouble." The admiral regarded his former brother-in-law suspiciously. "Where'd you get the bruises, Marcus?"

Marcus' answer of "Bar fight. Last night. Two turians." came just a little too readily for Hackett's liking.

"Where's my daughter, Marcus?" he growled.

"I don't know where the bitch is," Marcus said. "And if I did, I don't know why I would tell you."

Hackett chose to ignore, for the moment, the bitch comment. "So if I called her right now, I wouldn't hear her omni-tool beeping?"

Marcus looked around for a moment before answering. "Nope."

"That's as good as a goddamn confession in blood," Hackett said as he raised his arm to bring up his omni-tool.

"That's far enough, Steven," Marcus snarled, raising a pistol.

Before Marcus could react, Hackett's other hand came up with his own pistol. He fired a shot straight at Marcus' chest.

As Marcus crashed to the floor, Hackett holstered his gun, stepping around the body and into the hallway. He checked each room of the apartment, calling out to his daughter but heard no response.

He opened the last door and his heart stopped.

His beloved Katie, a cut by one eye, and her neck, arms and legs covered in bruises, was shackled at her wrists and ankles to the metal headboard of the small bed on the other side of the room. As he walked towards her, she shrank back, cowering into the very corner, trying to get as far away from him… Hackett shook his head in thought. He wasn't the one she was afraid of, not really, though he definitely wasn't her favorite person by a long shot. No, she was still trying to get away from Marcus. It looked as if the bastard had been beating her and doing only God knew what else to her. However, Hackett knew Marcus' bruises hadn't come from any bar fight with turians. That would have landed him in the hospital or the morgue. They'd been from Katie, fighting back... at least at first.

Hackett knelt beside the bed, looking at her with concern as he said gently, "Sweetheart, I'm not going to hurt you." She stared at him for a moment, as if wondering if she could trust him, before slowly nodding. He took this as consent and sat on the edge of the bed to hack the locks on the shackles.

As soon as her hands were free, Katie hauled back and punched her father square in the jaw. Her fear of Marcus had ebbed away, leaving only the anger she had held onto for the last twelve years.

Though the hit was hard (no one had ever claimed Katie hit like a girl, and come away unscathed), Hackett didn't flinch. Instead, he wrapped his arms around her and gently pulled her onto his lap as she collapsed against him and dissolved into tears, her anger giving way to exhaustion.

"I deserved that," he said quietly. "I can never make up for everything I've done wrong all these years, Katie, but I am sorry I ever doubted you about Marcus, and for all the hell he put you through because of that."

Katie whispered something against his chest that sounded suspiciously like "it's my fault."

Hackett pulled back and gently lifted her face with one hand so that he was looking into her eyes, the same clear ice blue as his own. "You can't tell me you blame yourself for this."

She nodded. "I-I provoked him. I just wanted him tell someone the truth, finally. And he did. He told Uncle Jason. A-and now he's dead because of me," she sobbed.

"He's not dead," Hackett said soothingly. "I've been talking to Ryan every couple of hours the last couple of days since he called to tell me what happened. Jason will be in the hospital for awhile, but he's going to be fine. He hasn't been able to talk yet though, so we didn't know exactly what happened beyond him getting shot. But Ryan was completely convinced it was because of Marcus. He's the reason I found you."

Katie threw her arms around Hackett's neck and hugged him. "Daddy, I'm sorry," she said tearfully as she laid her head on his shoulder. They stayed that way for several minutes, Hackett gently stroking her hair as she cried.

Finally, Katie took a deep shuddering breath and launched into a quiet narrative, describing everything that had taken place at the bar two days earlier.

"As soon as Uncle Jason was down, Marcus dragged me back to his place," Katie said when she was done, her voice trembling slightly. "We came here a couple of hours later."

Hackett didn't say anything for a few minutes. On the outside, he was maintaining control of his emotions, for Katie's benefit, but inside, he was shaking with fury. His little girl, being beaten and raped repeatedly by a man she had adored when she was a small child.

He swept a lock of her dark red hair from her face and gently kissed her forehead. "I'm just glad you're alive, Katie. And that I finally found you."

"Well at least next time, there won't be anyone left to find her," a weak voice said coldly, startling both Hackett and Katie. They looked around to see Marcus leaning against the doorway, one hand clutching his pistol, the other pressed against the wound where Hackett's bullet had struck, higher than he'd intended. "I'll go back and finish off my brother and his meddling son and then I'll be able to keep Katie as my plaything forever."

Hackett got up, pushing Katie behind him as he drew his gun. "No, Marcus. You're never laying a hand on my daughter ever again," he growled. "This ends here and now."

"Whatever," Marcus said. "Your funeral."

Two shots rang out followed moments later by a third.